Lost Apollo Film Salvage?

On Sun, 19 May 2013 10:32:46 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

kodak permanetely ended the ability to develop Kodachrome film a year
or two ago. so even if it was recovered intact it might be impossible
to develop. i read the equiptement was scrapped

The last I heard, there was still one different lab that could do it.

On Monday, June 3, 2013 8:12:14 PM UTC-5, Jan Philips wrote:
On Sun, 19 May 2013 10:32:46 -0700 (PDT), Bbo Hallr

wrote:

kodak permanetely ended the ability to develop Kodachrome film a year
or two ago. so even if it was recovered intact it might be impossible
to develop. i read the equiptement was scrapped

The last I heard, there was still one different lab that could do it.

....As even a blind flying squirrel can slam into a moose insulated by a giant snowball, Bbo actually *partially* has this correct. The Dwayne's Photo(*) chain ceased processing all Kodachrome products on January 18th, 2011, which was the day they finally ran out of the chemicals required to process the last film stocks they supported, the 35mm line. There are some scattered reports that processing might have continued shortly past that official date of secession, but this would have required those rolls to have been developed using recycled developers.

....From my own experiences doing Kodachrome 25 developing in a stingy, high school environment in the late 70s, with a bit of care handling the wash, you could have gotten a few acceptable runs with reusing the chems, but the quality of the grain would have obviously gone down over time. For a small-scale operation - i.e., your local drug store photo lab - you probably could have squeezed another 100-150 rolls out of that last developing batch before the potency got too weak. But for Dwayne's I wouldn't have put those numbers past 100. And the reports of post-01/18/2011 processing jobs were nowhere past or even near that number.

....Note that if anyone still has undeveloped rolls of Kodachrome, you can still get them developed. The only problem is that the only process that will work on the film produces a monochrome negative. Not sure which channel is dominant, tho, which can make a difference in the overall quality of a color shot that's been converted to B&W. If you're not familiar with this, load up a color image into Photoshop, then do a CTRL-1, 2 or 3, and you can isolate any of the R-B-G channels.

OM

(*) No relation to ol' "Do not use cuss words in your posts or I'll run off crying to my mum" Dwayne Allen Day, mind you.